Irregular Universe |
Some structures in the universe are so big they defy human conception. A curving collection of galaxies called the Giant Arc spanning some 3.3 billion light-years confounded astronomers when discovered in 2021. And a supersized ring of galaxies called the Big Ring stretches about 1.3 billion light-years across and four billion around. Why this is interesting: The existence of superstructures like these bucks against the “cosmological principle,” which is the notion that the universe is a relatively homogenous place, with matter distributed regularly. And scientists have observed strange anomalies in the light from the big bang, which glows in all space in the observable universe, and is supposed to be relatively uniform. What the experts say: If the universe is stranger and contains more dramatic variation than previously thought, then “average” (or uniform) would no longer even be a useful concept at sufficiently large scales. “Different observers may see slightly different universes,” at least at large scales, says Valerio Marra, a professor at the Federal University of Espírito Santo in Brazil. |
